The Effects of Sugar on Your Body – Do You Know the Truth?

The truth about sugar and how your body reacts

Do you think that sugar isn’t really that bad for you? Or maybe you have an idea that sugar is bad for you but don’t really understand the full effects, you owe it to yourself to know the truth about what happens to help you with proper health and weight loss.

Effects of sugar on your body

• Affects your eating habits

What I mean by saying that sugar affects your eating habits is that if you are eating foods with heavy sugars in them or even a small snack such as a candy bar then your body naturally starts to think that it is trying to gain weight. You then start to get cravings for more foods that are heavy in sugar, even shortened periods of time between cravings.

As your cravings grow then so does your sugar intake so the cycle gets harder and harder to break.

This cycle just gets worse and is dependent on your will-power, well for some the will-power method is easy however for most of us the will-power method is a joke.

Depending on your brain to make a rational decision when it comes to being influenced by food is one of the hardest things that we do. I will discuss the effects that sugar has on your brain later in this post.

• Leads to belly fat

The effects your body has from fructose sugar are simple and are almost obvious, sugar is the leading cause of belly fat to date.

There have been case studies done on this and I will give an example of one using two groups of people for 30 days, one group did not consume very much sugar at all and they did their natural workout plan. The second group of this study consumed sugar products as normal or as their body requested and did the same workout routine as the first group for a 30 day time period.

The results for both groups were very different, the first group that did not consumed much sugar ended up losing weight and getting tone. The second group had much different results such as they did not get fat build up everywhere on their body but they did get fat build up around their belly.

This may seem like a surprise to some but the easiest way to lose belly fat is to look at your diet and see how much sugar that you consume on a daily basis.

• Affects your energy level

The myth of consuming sugar products to give you energy is false. You can eat a candy bar or eat just about anything really sweet or full of sugar and it might make you think that you are primed or ready to go but the truth is that the energy burns out quickly leaving your body wanting more sugar and becoming tired (2:30 feeling).

This results in a decreased ability for you to have energy because of the sugars basically tricking your body by the short burst of energy from the sugar rush.

The theory of sugar giving you energy really circles around the fact the kids have a high energy level and most consume whatever they want. As you may know, we are not children and can not compare ourselves to the younger versions of ourselves if you have a goal to be healthy or lose weight.

In fact we need to educate ourselves as much as possible on health.

• Added diabetes risk

In this day and time, the diabetes rate is higher than ever and if you think for a second that it is just a genetic trait from person to person then you should research this a little more. Genetic traits do influence how our body’s reaction is to certain things but if you really look at this then you will find that increased sugar consumption is a leading cause of diabetes such as smoking is to cancer.

• Brain Impacts

Case studies have been done regarding the effects of your thought process after eating sugar products and the results led to a 25% to 35% increased time to make a decision or to solve a standard problem.

• Doubles your risk of heart disease

The increased amount of sugar consumption will result in increased fat deposits and will increase the risk for heart disease from adding stress on your heart to function also up and down rapid energy levels from the sugar rush burst. The longer the cycle goes the more at risk you are, most people find that one year they are perfectly healthy then go to the doctor the next year and get a result of heart disease or the start of, this again is not a leading indicator for your genetics.

• Raises you blood pressure

This is another result of fat deposits from and the rapid up and down levels of energy burst which is an unhealthy way to maintain energy. Luckily this is something that can be reversed by eating correctly and the proper exercise.

In conclusion if you are a heavy consumer of sugar products and want to cut back or eliminate sugar consumption then just know that your body will crave it so there will be a period of time that your body has to get used to not having as much sugar, for most of us this results in a few days of moodiness. This is completely normal but doesn’t have to be the case. If you want a few health ideas regarding sugars and what you can do, please check out my section of Healthy Snacks on this website.

Here is a helpful book on way to reduce sugar in just about any diet or way you may be eating.

I hope this was helpful and as always, I would love to hear from you about your thoughts and also if you have any questions. Leave a comment below or in the contact us section of Diet and Exercise for Health.

Thanks,

Shane